WASHINGTON, July 21 – The time to modernize America’s antiquated and inefficient voter registration system is now. Young voters and the country as a whole is more engaged than in decades.
That was the message the U.S. Public Interest Research Group emphasized at the biannual meeting of the National
Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) last weekend.
“In order to turn first time voters into lifelong voters, we need a registration system that is modern, easy to use, cost-effective and reliable,” U.S.PIRG’s Democracy Advocate Lisa Gilbert told the Secretaries of State gathered in Minneapolis.
Sujatha Jahagirdar, the Political Director of U.S. PIRG’s New Voters Project, spoke about the youth vote increase and its impact on our registration system.
Jahagirdar and Gilbert noted that the 2008 election marked the third consecutive cycle with an increase in the voters aged 18 to 29 at the polls. Young voters need faith in a working elections system, but unfortunately our outdated registration system continues to deny people their right to vote.
“It’s time to make the registration process more accountable, efficient, and based on ongoing database updates, rather than dependent on pen and paper forms,” added Gilbert, who heads U.S. PIRG’s registration
reform campaign in Washington.
-###-
U.S.
PIRG is the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups. State PIRGs are non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organizations.
